Optimizing Hardware

Over the past couple of years I have given a presentation called "Getting the Most from Your Hardware" to several user groups and at SOLIDWORKS World a few times.  This presentation is very well received at these event mainly due to the fact that hardware performance is something that affects all SOLIDWORKS users regardless of their industry, modeling techniques, or level of model complexity.  Everyone could use a little more power.  It’s a fairly universal situation.

This presentation is attached to this posting ( presentation and tools ) in it’s current revision in hopes that it will help SOLIDWORKS users improve their experience with the SOLIDWORKS tools they use on a day to day basis.  As an added bonus many of the items shown in this presentation will help overall machine performance regardless of what tools you are using.

The presentation focuses on serval aspects of your solid modeling environment including hardware settings, OS configuration, SOLIDWORKS settings, supporting software, and several others.  The presentation is an attempt to help the audience realize several key points, including

Lack of performance is more expensive that RAM, memory, and most everything else

Video Cards are a crucial component for 3D Modeling

Consistency should be your mantra

Routine hardware maintenance is critical

And Never Every Let Microsoft Make a Decision for You!!

In addition to the presentation in the above zip file there are several utilities that can be very helpful to CAD and System administrators including some tools from the "old" sysinternals company that was purchase by Microsoft a couple of years ago.  These include a process monitor, a registry monitor, a tool to make a USB Device bootable, registry cleaning utility, a tool that will clear SOLIDWORKS addins on boot, and others.

I am hopeful that the presentation and the utilities are beneficial in your efforts to pull all of the potential power from your current SOLIDWORKS environment.

Adrian Fanjoy

Technical Services Manager

Computer Aided Technology